Portalmania

Longlisted for The Story Prize Finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award Finalist for the British Science Fiction Award “Powerfully unique and thoughtfully written, with the ability to carry you to places you’ve yet to imagine and return you to places you’ve tried to escape.” —Chicago Review of Books “Every story in Portalmania is distinctive, vital, and sophisticated; the whole is an almost perfectly constructed debut collection that brings into sharp focus an impressively cohesive project.” —Locus, “2025 Recommended Reading” From the author of After World comes a genre-busting collection of stories that reveal our lives in a startling new light, perfect for fans of Kelly Link and Carmen Maria Machado. If you could go anywhere, where would you go? And what happens to the people you leave behind? In Portalmania, Debbie Urbanski wields sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and realism to build a dark mirror that she holds up to the ordinary world. Within the sharply imagined landscape of this collection, portals appear in linen closets, planetary gateways materialize in boarding schools, monsters wait in bathroom vents, and transformations of women’s bodies are an everyday occurrence. Political division causes physical rifts that break apart the Earth’s crust. A son on another planet sends dispatches home to the mother who failed him, and a wife turns to the supernatural to escape her abusive marriage. Portals are not only doorways found in children’s classics, but separations, escapes, dead ends, desertions, and choices that will change these characters’ lives forever. Against a fantastical backdrop, these stories dive bravely into the shadowy depths of betrayal, parenthood, revenge, murder, coercive sex, open marriages, asexuality, neurodiversity, and second chances. What if we’re not the ideal parents for our children? What if we’re not the ideal person to live our own life? Portalmania questions why we love as we do and asks if we have enough courage to reimagine desire.